Clouded Sulphur butterfly on Spotted Knapweed... Montana!

Thought I'd post this collage today just so folks don't think I've dropped off the face of the earth while I'm traveling out west. I will get around to blogs eventually but am slower than usual while on travel.

I'm traveling light which means I do not have my macro lens with me. These images were taken with a 70-300mm Nikon telephoto lens (leftover from my film camera that works perfectly fine on my Nikon D90). The image on the left was taken at 300mm while standing about 10 feet away from the action. The other two were taken with the same lens from the same distance but using a 1.4x tele-converter to get closer to the action. I rather like how these turned out, especially since shooting from further away meant that the butterflies weren't disturbed by my presence!

I'll be posting this to Macro Monday over at Lisa's Chaos... come on over and join the fun! If you'd like to view the collage up closer, click on the image. The images on the left, middle and right are also available to view large if you want to have a closer look.

Experiment with Vari-ND filter... western exposure!

I'm currently in Red Lodge, Montana and will soon be in Colorado for a photography workshop shooting fall color in the Rockies. A Vari-ND filter is one piece of equipment that it was recommended we bring with us to the photography workshop. Since I've never used one before, it seemed to make sense to spend some time learning a bit about it before the workshop.

The image below shows two shots of the same scene (camera moved a bit so the images aren't exactly identical). Compare the water appearance in the two photos and you will be able to see the difference between shooting with (on the right) and without (on the left) a Vari-ND filter. I have much more to learn about using this filter but wanted to share these images with you and let you know that I'm mostly away from blogging while traveling in the wild west.

This is the West Fork of Rock Creek as seen from under the bridge at the entry to the parking lot for the Silver Run hiking trail. I was balancing my tripod on rocks and myself as well so was having trouble keeping the exact same scene in my viewfinder.